I Can Do What I Want Challenge! Rainbow Love! ❤️

One regret I have is that I never really considered until recent years how diverse gender and sexual identity is, so I didn’t really make an effort to discuss this fully with my children. I didn’t know how important it is.

We discussed homosexuality and how we can love whomever we want, but not much beyond that. And even then one of my children conveyed to me as an adult that when they were little they thought only men could be gay. I felt really bad that I didn’t realize I needed to educate them more thoroughly.

These past several years I’ve reevaluated many aspects of representation in media as well. All of this exposure to stereotypical portrayals of gender roles and minimal diversity or representation of the kaleidoscopic rainbow of us.

It’s unfortunate.

I know how it feels to be different and not knowing where or if I fit in or belonged. You feel better when you see or know about someone similar to you. It’s a human drive to want to belong and feel validated, represented, socially supported, welcomed and embraced.

We are all the same in spirit, we are all equal, deserving and worthy of being loved and supported.

Why do people fear our differences so much that they feel defensive, threatened and want to attack others who are not like them?

There are studies about our brains, the amygdala, our social, tribal history and constructs trying to decipher what drives us.

I say we are not slaves to our biology or social conditioning.

We do have the ability to question our ingrained beliefs, behaviors and knee jerk fears. We do have the ability to learn and change. We have the ability to create new habits. We can choose to reprogram our social conditioning.

If we look back in our history, we see how disastrous our prejudices can be. It’s so insane that we still have our prejudices, when we know what it can lead to. I just began listening to Man’s Search for Meaning, it’s stunning to realize that this is recent history.

I’d also just read a Facebook post,” The only toxic relationship I ever had was with myself. Everyone else was just a reflection of that.” And I was questioning if that’s true, then wtf? What hopes do we have then? If everyone else is a reflection of my relationship with myself and these atrocities still occur, then what hope do we have?

Is that really true?

Am I responsible for everything? Are there no boundaries? What point is there then even trying to create change for the better? Because I certainly am not behaving in a toxic way? So it must be unconsciously or subconsciously, how can I change what I’m not even aware of? So if someone behaves in a toxic manner, it’s really a reflection of me?

I get so confused sometimes.

So any time I’m tempted to make a blanket judgement I stop myself and question, asking what’s the real deep down truth. I tune into my logical heart.

There is toxic behavior and whether it’s a reflection of me or not, I don’t feel right just allowing it to happen. That’s not loving. Should we let oppression, abuse and atrocities continue?

I’m reading a book called Judgement Detox and I also just finished listening to a book called The Power of Habit why we do what we do in life and business.

On one hand I know how challenging it can be to change our habitual patterns of thinking, our beliefs/habits become automatic. So we must have compassion and release judgement. For our world to become more peaceful, loving and supportive we need to replace harmful habits with healthful habits. We can change if we believe we can. We can always do better.

That gets a little tricky though. Does being forgiving and compassionate mean I accept abuse? Some spiritual gurus say there’s no such thing as abuse?

What if Rosa Parks never stood up for herself? What if Hitler prevailed.

In my view, you still need to hold the world accountable.

I say it’s helpful to be spiritual, but that doesn’t mean we dissociate into denial by saying it’s all an illusion so stop resisting what is and focus on being positive and that’s the best way to change the world, by being present and accepting everything, being grateful and turning it around, that it’s really you that is causing the adversity, that it’s only your perception of everything that is at cause. Everything is temporary and an illusion so do your best not to get upset? And please don’t stay upset because you’re only making it worse, because it’s all you being toxic anyway?

I understand that it doesn’t help to stay angry and victimized, that love needs to be our guide, but come on, we need boundaries and love dictates that we take action and live in this world too. We can’t just sit idly by meditating while the earth is on fire? Or at least I won’t, it doesn’t feel right for me.

So to me being non-judgmental doesn’t mean that you accept harmful behavior. It means that you know and live by the fact that we are all equal and worthy even if we don’t agree with or are different from one another, we respect and treat each other with dignity and honor. Instead of condemning or judging we remain open and curious, always seeking truth and love while keeping healthy, loving, respectful boundaries.

We are spiritual beings and it is said that our human experience is a projection, is illusory and temporary. We can not see the whole truth from our perceptions here, so we truly don’t have enough information to judge. We can be the observer of our experience and accept that crazy stuff happens here, but we would be insane as humans not to respond when the shit hits the fan.

Actually it’s a lot to ask of someone to view everything as a dream, to override our innate biology, human love and compassion. We can’t go through adversity and be the observer, detached and accepting of everything, telling ourselves, “It’s only my thoughts and beliefs that cause me to suffer.” I mean really? How can I not respond when there’s violence or tragedy. I know it’s important to forgive and let go, but I don’t know how to avoid suffering.

So sometimes I get confused. Am I being judgmental if I stand up for myself when others behave inappropriately towards me? When someone’s abusive towards me, it’s really me being abusive because everything is a projection?

I chose to leave abusive situations and that’s really worked out for me, so maybe it wasn’t me after all?

Some people seem to believe that they have the right to come into your space and say and do whatever they want and if you enforce healthy boundaries, they accuse you of being hypocritical because aren’t you a loving, forgiving, spiritual person? We can be forgiving, we have to be or else we’d go even madder, but being loving also means having boundaries about what’s acceptable, healthy and what’s not healthy. And yes there are even stronger labels such as “toxic.”

Being judgmental is toxic. And I’m talking about being judgmental as in condemning people and demonizing them, making them “other,” we’ve all witnessed where that can lead.

I can be judgmental too, we all can, we’re human, at least initially when someone behaves unusually. Like the other day our upstairs neighbor was cleaning their balcony which is above our porch. Our porch was deluged by torrents of bird poop filled water. I’d just recently cleaned my porch and now it was all soiled again. I judged, “I said wow, that person must be stupid or malicious, what did I do to them?” I was initially shocked, because though in the grand scheme of things it was not a big deal, we’d just have to clean our porch again (which my husband graciously did, so wonderful!) I kept thinking that I wouldn’t do that to my neighbor?

It was disrespectful. And then I switched to more compassion, “Well they may be going through a hard time, or maybe they have OCD and they were impulsive, thoughtless and didn’t mean any harm, etc.” And I let it go quickly. But for someone else, it may’ve escalated into something more divisive. If judgement were allowed to rule, that could’ve become a petty battle, lol.

So the more we stay curious, open and compassionate the more we can learn and know that we are all the same in spirit, we can be different as humans and still love, respect and support one another.

I remember having a discussion about judgment regarding Hitler. I said, “Well who knows what I would’ve done if I had the same life and genetics as Hitler, maybe I would’ve done the same?” The other person responded, “Well that would’ve meant you were Hitler?” I thought about it and realized, wow, yes in spirit we are everyone, or could’ve been.

So yeah, who am I to judge?

We separate the behavior from the spirit/person, there are harmful behaviors/personalities/characters, like those who condemn others for their gender, sexuality, ethnicity, age, socioeconomic status, etc. but there is still their spirit which is eternal and innocent beyond our temporary physical existence here. We forgive the human and attempt to heal or correct the harmful behavior with a little willingness. My hope is eventually we all become willing 🙂

We can forgive, be non-judgmental but that doesn’t mean we allow toxicity, the kyriarchy to continue? Just because we can’t judge doesn’t mean we sit back and take it. We can be spiritual and still have human boundaries too. And that’s why compassion and forgiveness is so important, so we can heal, so history doesn’t keep repeating itself.

I want a happy dream, how about y’all? I believe in rainbow love, how about y’all? 😀